Last March 11, 2011 Japan faced one of the major disasters in its history when they experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake causing enormous damages such as devastated houses, businesses and industries and public infrastructures, breaking down of one of its major nuclear power plant and lost of many lives. And during this challenging time, everyone gave whatever help and support they can provide to the affected people. Students in our department, majoring in urban engineering, also decided to contribute in their own ways.
"Global Special Seminar on Urban Enginerring" is an English undergraduate course offered last 2011 Summer Semester with the aim of gathering data, information, reports on environmental problems about the recent disaster and then organizing and summarizing them to create a website available for everyone. There were four undergraduate students who joined the course. The students collected materials related to the issues they chose (i.e damage of sewage systems, waste problems, radioactivity level in Tokyo's water, and tentative radioactivity standard for drinking water) which were mostly reported in Japanese. They studied the materials carefully, brushed them up and afterwards translated them into English under the guidance of the teaching assistants, Ms. Janice B. Sevilla and Ms. Yana Mariska, PhD students in environmental engineering. The final reports were presented in the last class of the semester.
These are the reports they made in the class. Although these are only small pieces of information concerning environmental problems by the recent disaster, I hope they may help to understand what had happened, what kind of problems they are now dealing with, and how to understand them. I am convinced that it is very important and helpful to learn from the experiences, so as to prepare for the better future.
Futoshi Kurisu
Associate Professor
Department of Urban Engineering